CLASS RIGHTS AND CLASS LAW It is very important that on the question of Shrewsbury we take a political offensive. We are in favour of bringing the law into disrepute. We don't believe that somewhere hidden away there is a little square box with a silver key in which are kept the inviolable rights which someone gave us, and that all we have to do is open up this little box and take out our rights and say to the ruling class, there you are, you can't touch us, the law says so. What we do say is that you have no rights unless you fight for them and unless you organise to defend them. The rights' of the working class are a product of the relationship of class forces - of the relative strength of the working class as opposed to that of the ruling class. Take the picketing law, for example. Officially you are allowed to have two men or two women standing on a gate, provided they simply carry placards and don't try to talk to anyone. But the miners didn't picket according to these rules. Nor did the Chrysler workers. They challenged the law by hijacking lorries, and by shutting down factories with their flyIng pickets. What they proved is that you can đo such things provided that the basis of support for such actions inside the working class is strong enough.
We have no chance of winning socialism in a peaceful way. But it's not sufficiant just to speak abstractly about the ruling class not giving up power without a fight. What we have to do a break the working class practiorily from supporting capitalist law and thereby establish in the very midst of the class struggle the necessity for revolutionary struggle and revolubionary violence. Unless we do that, unJess we make this clearly understood throughout the working class movement, we will not HILARY WAINWRIGHT For the last month the Portuguese and British governments, aided by the Daily Telegraph and the Times, have been "celebrating' the 600t anniversary of the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance. The climax comes on Monday with the four day visit of Cactino, the first by a Portugues prime minister since the establishment of the ascist regime 50 years ago.
Three main purposes underlie these celebrations: to bolster up the Caetano regime, which is increasingly threatened by the growing op position of Portuguese workers and students, to boost British investment in, and trade with, Portugal and its colonies; and most important, to strengthen the alliance and thus provide the basis for a co-ordinated strategy to defend imperialist interests in Southern Africa through NATO. No doubt the Tories" intention to settle with the Rhodesian racists will be high on the agenda in chis connection, the troublesome burden of direct political and administrative control, while using the weakness and dependence of the new national rulers to maintain their exploitation of the people and expropriation of the wealth of these ESTHERS However such a convenient solution was and g out of the question for the weak and dependent recently in the cases of Mozambique and ruling class of Portugal. The wealth they derive from the colonies is a direct product of their political and administrative control; it comes predominantly not from the investment of Portuguese capital but from payments via taxation, contributions to military defence etc. from the international firms which are increas ingly coming to dominate the coon omic structure of Portuguese colonialism e.g. Gulf Oil, Lonrho, ICI. Thus Portugal essentially plays the increasingly important role of "policeman for imperialist interests in Southern Africa", as Amilcar Cabral once pur it. movements on the coastal and mining areas.
Growing Links The growing links between the struggles in ditferent parts of Southern Africa, as seen most Zimbabwe (Rhodesia), and Angola and Namibia, are a new threat to imperialism's plans for the area, Britain, the US and West Germany are therefore likely to boost considerably their aid to Portugil via NATO, while South Afric will do the same directly. This raising of the slakes will really put to the test the demagogic support pledged by the leaders of many of the present Alricant regimes.
This probable intensification of NATO support for Portugal's attempt to stem the tide of revolution in Southern Africa also bas implications for the working class movement in Britain. The exteot to which the other im-